Deaf children's informal knowledge of multiplicative reasoning.
Multiplicative reasoning is required in different contexts in mathematics: it is necessary to understand the concept of multipart units, involved in learning place value and measurement, and also to solve multiplication and division problems. Measures of hearing children's multiplicative reasoning at school entry are reliable and specific predictors of their mathematics achievement in school. An analysis of deaf children's informal multiplicative reasoning showed that deaf children under-perform in comparison to the hearing cohorts in their first two years of school. However, a brief training study, which significantly improved their success on these problems, suggested that this may be a performance, rather than a competence difference. Thus, it is possible and desirable to promote deaf children's multiplicative reasoning when they start school so that they are provided with a more solid basis for learning mathematics.
Nunes
Terezinha
T
Department of Education, University of Oxford, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY, United Kingdom. terezinha.nunes@education.ox.ac.uk
Bryant
Peter
P
Burman
Diana
D
Bell
Daniel
D
Evans
Deborah
D
Hallett
Darcy
D
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003638:Deafness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D011340:Problem Solving